David Foster Wallace’s Famous Commencement Speech “This is Water” Visualized in a Short Film

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | May 8th, 2013

David Fos­ter Wal­lace was a hyper-anx­ious chron­i­cler of the minute details of a cer­tain kind of upper-mid­dle-class Amer­i­can life. In his hands, it took on some­times lumi­nous, some­times jaun­diced qual­i­ties. Wal­lace was also some­thing of a meta­physi­cian: reflec­tive teacher, wise-beyond-his-years thinker, and (trag­i­cal­ly in hind­sight) quite self-dep­re­cat­ing lit­er­ary super­star. In the lat­ter capac­i­ty, he was often called on to per­form the duties of a docent, admin­is­ter­ing com­mence­ment speech­es, for exam­ple, which he did for the grad­u­at­ing class of Keny­on in 2005.

He began with a sto­ry: two young fish meet an old­er fish, who asks them “How’s the water?” The younger fish look at each oth­er and say, “What the hell is water?” Fos­ter Wal­lace explains the sto­ry this way:

The point of the fish sto­ry is mere­ly that the most obvi­ous, impor­tant real­i­ties are often the ones that are hard­est to see and talk about. Stat­ed as an Eng­lish sen­tence, of course, this is just a banal plat­i­tude, but the fact is that in the day to day trench­es of adult exis­tence, banal plat­i­tudes can have a life or death impor­tance, or so I wish to sug­gest to you on this dry and love­ly morn­ing.

Fos­ter Wal­lace acknowl­edges that the anec­dote is a cliché of the genre of com­mence­ment speech­es. He fol­lows it up by chal­leng­ing, then re-affirm­ing, anoth­er cliché: that the pur­pose of a lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion is to “teach you how to think.” The whole speech is well worth hear­ing.

In the video above, “This is Water,” The Glos­sary—“fine pur­vey­ors of stim­u­lat­ing videograms”—take an abridged ver­sion of the orig­i­nal audio record­ing and set it to a series of provoca­tive images. In their inter­pre­ta­tion, Fos­ter Wallace’s speech takes on the kind of mid­dle-class neu­ro­sis of David Fincher’s real­iza­tion of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club.

It’s a dystopi­an vision of post-grad life that brings vivid clar­i­ty to one of my men­tors’ pieces of advice: “There are two worst things: One, you don’t get a job. Two, you get a job.” Or one could always quote Mor­ris­sey: “I was look­ing for a job, and then I found a job. And heav­en knows I’m mis­er­able now.” I still haven’t fig­ured out what’s worse. I hope some of those Keny­on grads have.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Steven Soderbergh Writes Twitter Novella After His Retirement From Filmmaking

in Film, Literature, Twitter | May 8th, 2013

How does one read Twit­ter lit­er­a­ture? Your thoughts are as good as mine. I sup­pose I’ll have to learn or end up in the ash heap of old-timey turn­ers of pages. Because Twit Lit is upon us, man­i­fest­ed by Jen­nifer Egan and now, under the twit­ter han­dle “Bitchu­a­tion,” by mer­cu­r­ial film­mak­er Steven Soder­bergh. Hav­ing announced his retire­ment from film­mak­ing in 2011, Soder­bergh made anoth­er announce­ment at the San Fran­cis­co Film Fes­ti­val on the State of Cin­e­ma (video above, tran­script here). The fol­low­ing day, Soderbergh’s Twit­ter novel­la Glue began with the lacon­ic April 28 tweet “I will now attempt to tweet a novel­la called GLUE.”

twitlit

Some unique fea­tures of Twit Lit: Soder­bergh can twit­pic an estab­lish­ing shot—which he does, of Ams­ter­dam—along with pics of oth­er loca­tions (or just vague­ly sug­ges­tive images). The indi­vid­ual tweets often read like Horse ebooks absur­di­ties. He’s up to Chap­ter Four­teen now. The lat­er tweets repli­cate screen­play dia­logue, with copi­ous inser­tions of BEAT to sig­ni­fy dra­mat­ic paus­es. Tak­en togeth­er, I sup­pose there’s coher­ence, though as I admit­ted above, I have not mas­tered the abil­i­ty to pull tweets togeth­er into longer text in my mind, Twit­ter being where I go when my atten­tion span is spent.

I leave it to savvi­er, more patient read­ers to judge the suc­cess of Soderbergh’s attempt. It may suf­fice to say that his pes­simism about the state of film does not apply to Twit­ter Lit. Or maybe he’s just pass­ing time before he makes movies again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read, Hear, and See Tweet­ed Four Sto­ries by Jen­nifer Egan, Author of A Vis­it from the Goon Squad

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness 

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The Meticulous Business Ledger F. Scott Fitzgerald Kept Between Hangovers and Happy Hour

in Books, Literature, Writing | May 6th, 2013

fitzgerald ledger
It used to be that accept­ing an advance on an unwrit­ten nov­el was as good as admit­ting fail­ure before the work is even fin­ished. Can you imag­ine blue-blood nov­el­ists Edith Whar­ton or Hen­ry James tak­ing a check before fin­ish­ing their books?

F. Scott Fitzger­ald may have been a long-suf­fer­ing wannabe when it came to high soci­ety, but he nev­er pre­tend­ed to be any­thing but a busi­ness­man when it came to writ­ing. For near­ly his entire pro­fes­sion­al life he kept a detailed ledger of his income from writ­ing, in which he not­ed the $3,939 advance he received for his in-progress nov­el, The Great Gats­by. The new Gats­by film out this sum­mer is the fifth adap­ta­tion. The first earned Fitzger­ald $16,666. (See the sur­viv­ing footage here.)

Recent­ly dig­i­tized by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, the lined note­book, which the writer prob­a­bly packed with him on all of his trav­els, paints a pic­ture of a prag­mat­ic busi­ness­man repeat­ed­ly on and off the wag­on. Sound like Gats­by? Maybe a lit­tle.

The famous­ly hard-drink­ing Fitzger­ald must have done his admin work after the hang­over wore off and before hap­py hour. He metic­u­lous­ly not­ed every pen­ny of every com­mis­sion earned, divid­ing the book into five sec­tions: a detailed “Record of Pub­lished Fic­tion,” a year-by-year account­ing of “Mon­ey Earned by Writ­ing Since Leav­ing Army,” “Pub­lished Mis­ce­lani (includ­ing nov­els) for which I was Paid,” an unfin­ished list of “Zelda’s Earn­ings” and, most inter­est­ing of all, “An Out­line Chart of My Life.”

A true Jazz Age sto­ry­teller, Fitzger­ald sets up the droll social scene of his own ear­ly days: Not long after his birth on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1896, the infant “was bap­tized and went out for the first time—to Lambert’s cor­ner store on Lau­rel Avenue.”

It’s worth a stroll through Fitzgerald’s clipped account of his child­hood, for the humor and the poignant ref­er­ences to birth­day par­ties and child­hood mis­chief. By 1920 the writer is mar­ried and has some pro­fes­sion­al momen­tum. In the mar­gins of that year’s page, he writes “Work at the begin­ning but dan­ger­ous toward the end. A slow year, dom­i­nat­ed by Zel­da & on the whole hap­py.”

By the last entry, the state of Fitzgerald’s life is grim—“work and wor­ry, sick­ness and debt.” The book reads like a whirl­wind of drink­ing, writ­ing, trav­el and jet-set­ting. Fitzger­ald holds his gaze steady on social dynam­ics, not­ing gath­er­ings and argu­ments with friends along­side the notes about his cre­ative bursts and dry spells.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site at and fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix.

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James Joyce Plays the Guitar (1915)

in Literature, Music | May 6th, 2013

Joyce and guitar

The work of James Joyce has inspired many a musician—from John Cage to Kate Bush, and Lou Reed to Irish band Ther­a­py?.  The famed Irish writer was him­self a great lover of song (his only col­lec­tion of poet­ry is titled Cham­ber Music); most read­ers of Joyce know that he packed his sto­ries and nov­els with thou­sands of allu­sions and quotes from pop­u­lar and clas­si­cal songs. Few­er know that if the ency­clo­pe­dic mod­ernist had not become James Joyce the heavy­weight author, we might know him as James Joyce, singer and com­pos­er. Joyce once shared the stage with opera singer John McCor­ma­ck and stud­ied and per­formed music through­out his life.

Joyce the singer is typ­i­cal­ly pic­tured “droop­ing over the keys” of a piano (as Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny founder Sylvia Beach put it). But he also played the gui­tar, as you can see from the 1915 pho­to above (tak­en in Tri­este by Joyce’s friend Ottac­aro Weiss). Joyce’s small-bod­ied gui­tar has been housed at the Joyce Tow­er Muse­um in Dublin since 1966, in an unplayable state.

Now, Eng­lish luthi­er Gary South­well has under­tak­en a restora­tion of the instru­ment at the behest of Tow­er Muse­um cura­tor Robert Nichol­son and Fran O’Rourke, pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at Joyce’s alma mater, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin. A musi­cian him­self, O’Rourke will per­form Joycean Irish songs dur­ing Bloom­sweek to off­set the cost of the project, accom­pa­nied on the restored Joyce gui­tar by Irish clas­si­cal gui­tarist John Fee­ley

Luthi­er South­well describes the gui­tar as “a fair­ly stan­dard instru­ment of the peri­od… not from any great mak­er of the past or any­thing like that.” In the video above from The Irish Times, see South­well, Pro­fes­sor O’Rourke, and Joyce schol­ar Ter­ence Killeen describe the state of the gui­tar and its his­to­ry. And below, lis­ten to Joyce’s only known com­po­si­tion, the melan­choly “Bid Adieu to Girl­ish Days,” sung by tenor Kevin McDer­mott.

h/t @faraway67 and @matthiasrascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Kurt Vonnegut to John F. Kennedy: ‘On Occasion, I Write Pretty Well’

in History, Literature | May 3rd, 2013

VonnegutToJFKFinal

When archivist Stacey Chan­dler was comb­ing through one of the “Mass­a­chu­setts” files recent­ly at the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library and Muse­um in Boston, she stum­bled on some­thing unex­pect­ed: a let­ter to Kennedy from an obscure writer named Kurt Von­negut, vol­un­teer­ing his ser­vices on Kennedy’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

The let­ter (click the image above to see it larg­er) was writ­ten on August 4, 1960, when Von­negut was a strug­gling fic­tion writer and a failed Saab deal­er liv­ing on Cape Cod, in the town of West Barn­sta­ble, Mass­a­chu­setts. He had writ­ten two nov­els: Play­er Piano (1952) and The Sirens of Titan (1959). In a few declar­a­tive sen­tences, Von­negut out­lines his writ­ing expe­ri­ence and offers his help. There is no record at the JFK Library of a reply from Kennedy and, accord­ing to Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, no men­tion of the sub­ject in two Von­negut biogra­phies.

“I am thir­ty-eight,” writes Von­negut, “have been a free­lance for ten years. I’ve pub­lished two nov­els, and am a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor of fic­tion to The Sat­ur­day Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal, McCal­l’s, and so on. On occa­sion, I write pret­ty well.”

via Slate/Archival­ly Speak­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Kurt Vonnegut’s Tips for Teach­ing at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop (1967)

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Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Animated in Two Minutes

in Animation, Literature | April 30th, 2013

You prob­a­bly know Mikhail Bul­gakov through one of two works: Heart of a Dog, his short nov­el about the forced trans­for­ma­tion of a dog into a human being (com­par­isons to the grand Sovi­et project have, indeed, been sug­gest­ed), or The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, his longer, lat­er nov­el about a vis­it paid to Sovi­et Rus­sia by the dev­il him­self. Heart of a Dog, writ­ten in 1925, did­n’t see offi­cial Russ­ian pub­li­ca­tion until 1987; The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, writ­ten between 1928 and 1940, did­n’t come out until 1967. This sug­gests that Bul­gakov’s lit­er­ary per­spec­tive may have touched a nerve with the author­i­ties, but the art­ful­ness with which he expressed it has since lift­ed him to the top of the twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian canon.

Oth­er cre­ators have paid to trib­ute to the enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta with art­ful­ness of their own. We now have at least five films, two tele­vi­sion series, nine­teen stage pro­duc­tions, two bal­lets, four operas (though the com­pli­cat­ed mate­r­i­al defeat­ed Andrew Lloyd Web­ber’s attempt at adap­ta­tion) and a graph­ic nov­el based in whole or in part on Bul­gakov’s book. At the top of the post, you can watch Svet­lana Petro­va and Natalia Bere­zo­vaya’s Mar­gari­ta, an ani­mat­ed short that, ambi­tious in its own way, attempts to cap­ture The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta in two ever-shift­ing min­utes of imagery. (Or, as this Russ­ian ani­ma­tion data­base puts it, “Impu­dent young ani­ma­tors dare to touch Bul­gakov.” ) Though made in 1997, it comes off today as quite a tan­ta­liz­ing “book trail­er,” though I would sub­mit that Bul­gakov’s writ­ing needs none of our inter­net-age mar­ket­ing inno­va­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky Told in a Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Jane Austen, Game Theorist: UCLA Poli Sci Prof Finds Shrewd Strategy in “Cluelessness”

in Books, Literature | April 26th, 2013

Pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy is prob­a­bly the worst rea­son to dis­miss a new per­spec­tive, whether it comes from with­in one’s field, out­side it, or any­where else. Snob­bery leads to inbreed­ing and intel­lec­tu­al dead-ends. So when Michael Chwe, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at UCLA who spe­cial­izes in game the­o­ry, has an epiphany about Jane Austen as a pro­to-game the­o­rist, maybe his insights should change the way Eng­lish profs—and every­one else—read the author of Pride and Prej­u­dice.

I don’t know. I haven’t read Chwe’s book, Jane Austen: Game The­o­rist (read a sam­ple chap­ter here), but I’ll con­fess, I’m skep­ti­cal of any­one who calls Austen’s lit­er­ary work a “research pro­gram” that has “results” in a book of “230 dia­gram-heavy pages.”  It seems to miss the point some­how. Austen is per­haps these days the most-adapt­ed of British writ­ers, and her aca­d­e­m­ic cachet couldn’t be high­er. But the best takes on her work—whether schol­ar­ly or popular—are fun, focused on char­ac­ter and lan­guage, not tech­no­crat­ic the­o­ry.

But maybe I’ve mis­judged Chwe’s intent. He was, after all, inspired to read Austen by “watch­ing movies and read­ing books with his chil­dren.” And one of the con­cepts Chwe ascribes to Austen is that of “clue­less­ness,” a term he takes from that clas­sic nineties movie Clue­less (inspired by Austen’s Emma, clip above). In Chwe’s analy­sis, clue­less­ness is not at all gar­den-vari­ety stu­pid­i­ty; it’s the benev­o­lent devi­ous­ness of Eliz­a­beth Ben­net or the “dumb blonde” act Ali­cia Silverstone’s char­ac­ter pulls off in con­vinc­ing oth­ers that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, all the while manip­u­lat­ing, cajol­ing, and demur­ring to get her way.

Chwe also pur­sues the dark­er side of clue­less­ness, relat­ing it to grim episodes like the 2004 killing of four pri­vate con­trac­tors in Fal­lu­ja. Over­all, his book iden­ti­fies fifty “manip­u­la­tion strate­gies” he finds in Austen. While his book seems to promise some enter­tain­ing obser­va­tions it also might fur­ther con­firm for seri­ous Austen read­ers that the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry nov­el­ist was one of the most psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly insight­ful writ­ers of the past few cen­turies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

New Stamp Col­lec­tion Cel­e­brates Six Nov­els by Jane Austen

As Pride and Prej­u­dice Turns 200, Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jmagness

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Two Beautifully-Crafted Russian Animations of Chekhov’s Classic Children’s Story “Kashtanka”

in Animation, Literature | April 22nd, 2013

Long before mas­ters of the short sto­ry like Ray­mond Carv­er and Flan­nery O’Connor com­mand­ed the respect of cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers every­where, Anton Chekhov’s spare, man­nered sto­ries set the stan­dard for the form. Known for their sub­tle­ty and keen obser­va­tions of human weak­ness and social ills, the typ­i­cal Chekhov sto­ry nev­er boils over into melo­dra­ma but sim­mers, slow­ly push­ing ten­sions close to the sur­face of rou­tine inter­ac­tions with­out let­ting them break through and explode.

The sto­ry ani­mat­ed above, how­ev­er, is some­thing of an excep­tion to Chekhov’s domes­tic human dra­mas. “Kash­tan­ka” is a about a dog, and a good bit of it is told from her per­spec­tive. First pub­lished in 1884 as “In Bad Times,” the sto­ry was alleged­ly inspired by Chekhov’s love of the cir­cus. Chekhov wrote the sto­ry for chil­dren, so it’s fit­ting that it receive this Dis­ney-esque treat­ment (the open­ing scene remind­ed me of Gep­pet­to’s work­shop).

Russ­ian poster design­er and children’s book illus­tra­tor Mikhail Tsekhanovsky made the film in 1952, when car­toons were painstak­ing­ly hand-drawn cel by cel. Anoth­er Russ­ian ani­ma­tor, Natalia Orlo­va, takes advan­tage of 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy in her 2004 ren­der­ing of “Kash­tan­ka” below, but she does so in a unique way that inte­grates hand-paint­ed images; the flick­er­ing stop-motion resem­bles children’s book illus­tra­tions come to life. Along with the excel­lent sound design, her cap­ti­vat­ing style makes for a very dif­fer­ent visu­al­iza­tion of the sto­ry.


Note: You will need to click CC at the bot­tom of the video to launch the sub­ti­tles.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

12 Ani­mat­ed Plays by William Shake­speare: Mac­beth, Oth­el­lo and Oth­er Great Tales Brought to Life

“The Me Bird” by Pablo Neru­da: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­pre­ta­tion

Three Inter­pre­ta­tions of Charles Bukowski’s Melan­choly Poem “Nir­vana”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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